African Art Exhibition of 1923
Collection Description
In 1903, Stewart Culin (1858–1929) became the founding curator of the Department of Ethnology at the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, now the Brooklyn Museum. He was among the first curators to recognize museum installation as an art form. He was also among the first to display ethnological collections as art objects, not as ethnographic specimens. This approach is evidenced in his exhibition Primitive Negro Art, Chiefly from the Belgian Congo. The exhibition opened in April 1923, and displayed African objects he had acquired in Europe from dealers.
These digital images of the African Art Exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923 are from the Culin Archival Collection, the Museum Library, and the Digital Lab. This is a small selection of textual and visual documents; many more are available for viewing at the Brooklyn Museum Archives.
